


What Came Before, What Comes After

by 37Cats



Category: Common Law
Genre: Angst, F/M, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Multi, Pre-Canon, Prompt Fic, actually i have no idea what the pairing is, just FYI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 13:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/37Cats/pseuds/37Cats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So the prompt on the Common Law Kink Meme was "Anything that gives an insight into why Wes was willing to go to therapy to preserve his relationship/partnership with Travis but not so he could save his marriage"</p>
<p>Obviously this called for ambiguous slashy threesome het fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Came Before, What Comes After

Wes and Alex just worked, clicked together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, moved on the same plane, spoke the same language.  By their third date they were finishing each other’s sentences, communicating silently, sliding into and out of each other’s space like a finely choreographed dance.  And the sex was fantastic, best he’d ever had.  He still remembers the hypnotic dreamy nights they spent in her crappy studio apartment, on her crappy second hand futon, moving effortlessly between sex and study, arguing briefs against the smooth skin of her thighs.  He remembers stumbling out of class, high on sleep deprivation and brain cottony with information overload and seeing her there, haloed in sunlight, clutching two giant paper cups of coffee, hair a mess and pillow creases still on her face, his raggedy sweatshirt hanging off her slender frame.  He remembers the painful way his heart clenched at her smile over the library table late at night, the rest of their study group fading into darkness.  
  
After all that, after school and internships and the bar, after the panic of “what now?”  After that there was the joy of moving alongside her like a shark, sliding smooth and slippery through the world.  He reveled in watching her rise victorious and knowing that at the end of the (long long long) day she would come home with him and he would be able to hold her close.  At the end of the day they would come home and drop the world and be Wes-and-Alex and he would have his wife, this beautiful, kind, funny woman, who no one else ever got to see.  This woman that he guarded so jealously, who he would protect with his life, who he circled around like a planet around a star.  
  
Then the impossible happened, the earth cracked and lurched, solid ground turned to quicksand and he was drowning, drowning.  They both knew he was losing it, scrabbling for purchase, reaching out.  And Alex, sweet, wonderful, beloved Alex - she couldn’t catch him.    
  
They ended up staring at each other across an unbridgeable gap.  Shouting at each other and not able to hear the other in the echoing spaces of their suddenly too big house.  Alex had to watch as he ripped himself apart and tried to put himself back together.  Every time she reached out she just seemed to dig into an open wound, stumbling over the strange new geography of his psyche and leaving unintentional bruises in her wake.  
  
He couldn’t blame her for the empty disbelief when he gave it all up, everything they had ever worked for, and joined the police.  Couldn’t blame her when they tiptoed around each other, slept stiffly on opposite sides of the bed and had hard, grasping, ultimately unfulfilling sex on the kitchen floor.  
  
The first time he saw her smile in what seemed like ages and ages was when she met Travis.  She came up against his easy smile and almost unintentional flirting and was clearly disarmed.   
  
Said “I like this one, you should keep him,” and laughed, turned warm eyes on Wes, and it was like the first time all over again.  
  
“See man, your girl likes me,” Travis said and slung a warm, heavy arm over his shoulders.  
  
“That’s my wife, asshole.” Wes returned, and fell a little bit in love with him for the way Alex’s eyes crinkled at the corners.  
  
Of course it was just a stopgap, triage in the field, a bandage when they needed surgery.    
  
The sprawl of Travis’ body on their expensive couch, yelling at the TV and sharing cheap beer, overturning the salsa bowl and cursing so creatively that Alex giggled uncontrollably.  Alex turning up unexpectedly at the precinct on late nights, three cups balanced in a cardboard holder, sharing a smile at the way Travis cooed at his coffee.  Alex yelling at them both to take a break before turning the hose on them in exasperation, forcing them away from the rolls of sod.    
  
None of it helps in the long run, because they are always left alone in the house in the end.    
  
Dinner conversation is still stilted.  Wes’s cases still revolve around dead bodies and pain, still leave Alex tight-lipped and damp-eyed.  Alex’s cases seem unimportant in the face of that, she feels guilty for enjoying them and Wes feels guilty for his fleeting moments of silent judgement.  They fight about money, which won’t ever actually be a problem.  They fight about work hours, which haven’t really changed.  Travis is the only thing they actually have in common, the only thing they can talk about without ending up screaming, and there is only so much they can talk about him, only so much space he can take up in their lives and conversations.  It doesn’t last, collapses in on itself, until Wes wakes up one day in a hotel room, divorce papers on the bedside table.  
  
He gets so mad.  So mad at everything.  It burns under his skin when he wakes up, it flares up at little mistakes, it makes him snappish, gives his sarcasm teeth and claws, makes him indescriminatly ruthless.  He’s mad at himself, he’s mad at his job, he’s mad at the perps, he’s mad at the captain, he’s mad at Alex (only not, never really), and he’s mad at Travis.  He’s furious with Travis.  He’s never felt this way before, never felt this uncontrollable roll of emotions, and that scares him.  Scares him and makes him madder, a vicious cycle that drives him higher and higher.  
  
Travis has failed him.  Travis has betrayed him.  Travis was supposed to save them and he didn’t.  Travis, who seems untouched, who is outside of his pain.  Every smile, every touch, every joke and laugh is another reminder.  Travis failed him and Travis doesn’t know, doesn’t care.  Travis, who remains stoically impartial, doesn’t pick a side, listens without speaking and refuses to agree when he growls thoughtlessly about Alex, who tells the bartender to cut him off when he’s just getting started.  
  
It all makes him angrier, sends him into a tailspin.  Out of control.    
  
It ends badly.  The way it had to.  The way he wanted it to.  It ends with violence and shouting and guns, with white faces around them and someone speaking low and quiet, moving slow until the guns are ripped away and they are both on the ground.  In the interview room they throw him into to calm down Wes shakes and shakes and shakes, sweats but doesn’t cry.  
  
Afterward he goes blessedly blank.  Nods when the captain tells him to get out.  Goes and spends days in his hotel room, orders room service occasionally and doesn’t shower.  Lets the silence settle over the room like a layer of grime.  He is empty in his empty room, finally balanced inside and out, no conflict.  
  
He answers when the captain calls, showers and dresses, buttoned up, tie cinched tight.  Outside he wears sunglasses and takes a cab instead of driving.  When he walks in people won’t meet his eyes, a path opens for him and he doesn’t look left or right, doesn’t look back.  He pauses in the doorway to the bullpen because Travis is leaning against his desk, smile turned on some woman, aggressively loose and at ease.  
  
They ignore each other in the captain’s office, so studiously that Travis has to ask the captain to repeat himself.  It’s crazy, crazy and doomed to failure, and Wes almost snarls at the captain to stop mocking them.  Then he remembers Alex and Travis, slumped on the couch together, shoulder to shoulder, laughing at some stupid movie on the tv, the light from the kitchen falling yellow on them, bowl of popcorn warm in his hands. 

He can’t have everything, doesn’t deserve it, but he still says yes.  Doesn’t breath again until Travis does too.


End file.
